Features:

And suddenly, it was all very clear. The answer was less money. Fewer parts. Caring about them, caring about ourselves, and the games, too. - jerry maguire almost said this.

Parts List:

Tools Required:

Safety Info:

Abbreviations:

How to use epoxy:

Instructions:

Cut a 33"x33" square out of the corner of your big sheet of plywood. This will form the foundation which everything else will be built on top of. (If you want to include a bar now or later, make this a little bit bigger in one dimension, like 33"x39". Use make the extra 6" hang off the back of the pad and use that to attach your bar.) Draw an 11" tic-tac-toe grid on each side, dividing it into 9 11"x11" squares. (Yes, draw this on the top AND bottom of the piece.)

Cut four squares out of your remaining piece of plywood to form the steps. These should be slightly smaller than 11"x11"... 10 and 7/8" x 10 and 7/8" will be good. These pieces must be perfectly smooth one one side! Do not cut them out of a part of the plywood thath as knots or holes or other surface imperfections.

Get your steel ready for use. You need to remove any labels/stickers from it, and also clean off the sticky stuff they leave behind. If you happen to have some acetone handy (Note: acetone is pretty toxic, handle appropriately) it will melt the stickiness right off. If not, you'll have to wash it off some other way (soap and water). However... make sure you always keep the steel flat. Dont bend it at all. We need it really flat for this thing to work.

Cut 4 12"x12" squares out of your 26 gauge sheet metal. Also cut a .5"x.5"square out of each corner, and drill a hole that is 1"x1" from each corner with a drill bit that is a little smaller than the heads of the screws you are using. (I used mod truss screws which have a very large head, so I used a 3/16" drill bit to make these holes. Tips for making the holes: First, use a permanent marker to mark where each hole will go. Then take a large nail and a hammer, lay your metal on a piece of scrap wood, and put the nail where you want the hole and give it one strong whack with the hammer. This will make a dent that your drill big can sit in to prevent it from sliding around. Also, it helps if you make a template of the .5" square you're cutting out and where the hole will be drilled, so you can just trace it on each corner. Here is one I made, which should be the right size when you print it (save to your desktop and print it from a graphics program, dont print it straight from your browser), but check just to be sure. (It is exact at 81 dpi, if that means anything to you.)


IMPORTANT: notice when i say the hole is 1" in from the corner, i mean 1" BEFORE you cut out the small .5" squares. It is only .5" in from the smaller square.

Once all your steel is cut (four 12" squares, with .5" squares cut out of each corner and a small hole drilled 1" in from each corner) it is time to bend it around the steps. This is an age-old process pioneered by ddrhomepad himself and little changed since then. Basically you want to lay the steel over on of your steps, centered so that the 4 "tabs" stick out evenly on each side. Then take another step and lay it on top, so you have steel sandwiched between 2 steps. Clamp this sandwich together, making sure it all stays aligned as you clamp. Then take your hammer and tap each tab down around one of the steps. Remove the clamps and the top (spare) step. Here's a photo after they are clamped, but before any hammering:

NOTE: this is a photo from another pad I made, so it had holes around the edge to add corner brackets. You dont need to drill these! But hopefully you can see how the little corners we cut out align with the wood.

After you've bent all four pieces of metal around the steps, use a permanent marker to label which arrow you're going to use each step for (up, down, left right). Mark this on both the steel and the wood. Also mark how they are aligned by scraping a mark into one edge of the steel, and making a similar mark that lines up with it on the bottom of the wood. Finally, mark which side is the bottom of the wood. Next take the steel off the wood and set it aside. We have a lot more work to do to the wood before we screw the sheet metal on top. (Labeling is so you can keep track of which piece of metal goes with which piece of wood, in case they arent all exactly the same size.)

Note: All the following steps involving the wood are done to the top of the wood, thats why you need to mark which side is the bottom.

Using the wood boring bit, drill a hole in ONE corner of the TOP of each step, about 1.5" in from each edge. Like this: (crappy edited picture, and not to scale, trust the numbers, not what it looks like.)



DO NOT DRILL ALL THE WAY THROUGH. You just want this to be an indentation about 1/8" to 3/16" deep. (NOTE: in most of my photos, the hole is not this deep. Don't trust the photos. I'll post better ones later.) Next, take a small drill bit (1/4" is a good size, nothing bigger than that.) And drill a smaller hole all the way through in the center of the indentation you just made. So a cross section of your step should look like this:

Time for some soldering! Plug in your soldering iron and let it heat up at least 5 minutes. Take your piece of Cat-5 cable and cut the outer coating off, so you just have the 8 strands of wire inside. Untangle them so you have 4 sets of two wires twisted around each other. Now for each pair, untwist the last 6" of wire, so you have 4'6" of colored wire twisted with white wire, and the last six inches of the strand the two are separated. Got it? Now, use your knife to remove about .5" of insulation from the COLORED wire of each pair. Bend the exposed wire into a little flat circle, kind of like those dipper things you'd use to dye a hardboiled egg. It should look like this:

I promise i'll make better pictures later.

Now, do that for each pair of wires, so you have 4 of these things. You want to solder each one into the center of a small copper disc that will fit in the indentation you drilled in the steps. I am using a little piece I cut out of a sheet of copper because I happened to have a sheet of copper lying around. If you dont have one of those, just use pennies. Shiny ones. If you dont live in a country that has copper coins, use another type. Copper is prefered because solder sticks to it really really well... it will never fall off. Heres what it looks like after you've soldered it on:

Oh... some soldering tips: First off, make sure you're working on a surface that won't burn or melt. Lay the penny flat on the surface, and heat it up with the soldering iron. Then with your other hand, feed a little drop of solder into the place where your iron hits the penny. It should melt and stick to the penny. Lift up your soldering iron and let the solder harden to the penny. Now take the little wire loop you made ,and rest that on top of the solder blob. Bring in your soldering iron and lay it on top of the wire loop. This shold heat up and sink into the solder. Hold it there, remove the iron, keep holding the wire until the whole thing hardens. That wasn't so bad, was it?

Ok, next take each pair of wire, and thread it through the hole you drilled in the step, so that the copper disc rests in the indentation you drilled. Like this:


If the disc doesnt sit flat in the indentation (because of the solder/wire, use a sharp knife to dig out a little more wood until it sits reasonably flat. Now back it out a little bit, mix up a small amount of epoxy (about a pea-sized blob from each bottle) and apply it to the underside of the copper disc. Glue it down in place in the indentation. (NOTE: do not get any epoxy on the TOP side of the disc. We need that clean to act as a conducting surface.) You can either hold it in place for 5 minutes while the epoxy hardens, or stack a few more coins on top of it, and tape them down, like this:

That should provide enough weight/force to keep the disc in place while the epoxy dries. (Note, the hole shown here is not as close to the edge of the step as I recommend you make it.) Ok, by the time you finish the last one, the first one should be dry. But wait at least 10 minutes just to be safe. (Always good to wait 2x as long as the epoxy says it will take, if you try to move it too soon and it's not dry you'll have to start all over.)

When they are all dry, remove the tape and any coins you used to hold the penny/copper disc down.

The next step is to epoxy a sheet of tin foil over the top of each step. This part is a little complicated, but once you get the hang of it it's actually pretty easy. Read this entire section before you begin, because the epoxy dries fast and you wont have time to come back and check this once you start. Finish each panel completely before you move on to the next one!

Tear off 4 sheets of tin foil from your roll. (make sure they're at least 11"x11", but make them bigger to be safe.) Try not to crinkle the aluminum foil, we dont want any wrinkles or tears. (Ok, if you're really bad at using aluminum foil, take the roll out of the box, lay it on a flat surface, and roll it, letting the foil unwind as it rolls. Then cut the sheets off with a pair of scissors.) Now, you need to mix up a lot of epoxy. You will need at least a quarter-sized blob from each bottle, though if you're a first-timer, you might want to use more just to make sure you'll have enough.

Mix up the epoxy THOROUGHLY. It is especially important here since aluminum foil does not like to be glued, so you want to make sure you get a strong bond. Once its all mixed up, transfer it to the top of the step. Now... You want to spread it out AS THINLY AS YOU CAN. Like seriously you just want a light sheen of epoxy, it should just make the wood look wet. The best method is to get an old credit card or other plastic card, and use this to smear the epoxy around, and really press it hard against the wood so that it will scrape off all of the excess. You need to COMPLETELY cover the surface with epoxy, BUT... don't get any in the hole you made! We still need that copper clean so it conducts electricity. Let me say this again: SCRAPE OFF ANY EXCESS EPOXY ON THE STEP. Just a light (but completely covered) coating! Heres a picture of me spreading some epoxy:



Heres a picture of it once im done spreading:


Notice in the second picture that all the large epoxy ridges are gone. It is really thin, all you can see are a few "brushstrokes" in the epoxy. Ok, now its time to apply the aluminum foil. Take your square, and (making sure not to wrinkle it)lay it over the step. Start by pushing down in the middle, then smooth it outward gently until it is completely down. As you go, try not to get any bubbles underneath! Also, make sure you dont punch through the tin foil at the indentation we drilled. just let the foil stretch over that for now. Once its completely down, use a crumlpled up tissue or paper towel to really press the foil down hard into the glue. Go over the whole thing a couple times. If you have any bubbles: pop them in several places with a pin or sharp knife tip, then use the tissue to push them down. (Note, the tissue is just because if you used you hand there would be too much friction, but the tissue will slide easily along the foil and smooth things out.) Here's a picture of the finished panel:


(Note, you can see a little bump in the foil where the indentation is in the bottom right corner.)

Done with all four panels? Good. The hardest part is over... the rest of the construction is pretty simple. Next, you need to remove some of the aluminum foil. First cut off all the excess around the edges. Then you need to cut a little more off the edges... We need to make sure that none of the aluminum foil will make contact with the steel we're going to bend over it later, so scrape off about 1/8" from the foil around all four edges of the square. This will make sure they stay separated. Now we are going to attach the steel by using 1 screw in each corner, so we also need to scrape off some foil from the corners so that the screw does not complete a circuit between the steel and the foil. Scrape off a 1" square in each corner (note, you dont need to scrape off the whole square, just make a little trench that separates the corner square from the rest of the foil. It's also time to finish up the work on the hole we drilled eariler. Cut a star shaped pattern into the foil over the hole with a sharp knife, like this:

Now push the foil down into the hole, so that it contacts the copper disc (So now the cat-5 wire, copper disc, and aluminum form one side of a circuit. The white wire from the cat-5 will later be wired to the other side of the circuit.) We want to make sure the foil stays in place on the copper so that there is never a break in the circuit. To do this, I pile a couple more coins on top of the foil until they stick out JUST BARELY above the top of the foil. When i say barely i mean like the thickness of 1-2 sheets of paper. Then place a small square of masking tape over those coins (like we did before when the epoxy was drying) But this time make the square just big enough to cover the hole and stick down a little on the edges. Here is a drawing:

Note, If you made the indentation 1/8" deep like I said earlier, you'll probably only need one or two coins. To get the right height, use different combinations, like a nickel and a dime, or two pennies, etc. if you need to add a littttle more height, just use a folded piece of aluminum foil.)

And here is a photo of what it should look like up to this point:

Alright, almost done with the steps... one last thing we need to do before it can be assembled. Take your cereal box, and cut sixteen .5" wide by 10" long strips of cardboard out of it. Also cut sixteen 11" long strips of masking tape. Position a strip of cardboard in the center of each strip of masking tape, and stick the whole thing down along each edge of the steps. You want the cardboard strip to be centered about 1/2" in from the edge, so if your masking tape sticks out a quarter inch from the cardboard, you can align the masking tape with the edge of the step. Note, none of the dimensions in this step are really critical. Not worth measuring anything with a ruler, just eyeball it. When it is done, it should look like this:



A few things to note from this picture: the distance the cardboard strips are from the edge of the step (1/8"-.25"), how little tape is used: you want to keep as much of the step tape-free as possible, remember anywhere there is tape will not register a step, so only keep it right around the edges. Also note that you can see where the copper disc is taped in the lower left corner. Sensitivity will be a little worse here, so when you assemble the pad, you'll want this corner facing outward so it wont be an area you step on frequently. Ok, just a couple more things to do. See how the cardboard in the above photo stops about 3/4" short from the corners? That is a good thing. Take a sharp knife and remove any tape or cardboard from a little square about 3/4" out from each corner of the step. Also, remember earlier i said to cut out a square of aluminum foil from each corner. Well you need to check that now. Now that you've removed the tape/cardboard from the corners, you also need to make sure any aluminum that is exposed in the corners is separated from main center piece of aluminum. The easiest way to do this is to just cut another "trench" in the foil right along the tape line you just cut.

Now flip the step over. You should have a wire coming out of the bottom (if not, you're in trouble.) We want to screw this step right down to the foundation, so you need to dig a little trench in the plywood that this wire can rest in when its all screwed together. Use a strong, sharp knife (or a wood chisel or electric router if you have one, though a router is probably overkill) and cut WITH THE GRAIN towards the nearest edge. Just make a little valley it can rest in.

Allllright. Now its time to put the steel sheet metal back onto the steps. Match up the pieces you shaped earlier with their matching steps (make suer they're facing the right way too or they might not fit on.) Slide it down over the top, and drill a small hole (slightly smaller than the size screw you're useing) in each corner. Now screw the top on. Ta-da! the steps are done!

Ok, we're done with the steps, now onto the diagonal squares.

Cut the two shelves into 5 11"x11" squares. The cutting pattern should look like this:

Cut the blue lines first, then the red lines. The shaded yellow sections get thrown away. Note that this pattern will give you four squares with 2 finished edges and 2 cut edges (use these as the diagonals, with the finished edges pointing outward) and one square with 3 cut edges and one finished edges (use this as the center square since the edges wont be seen). (Recall that my design uses a 12"x36" shelf and a 12"x24" shelf. Hence the shape in the above drawing. If you're not using shelves, it wont matter which edges are finished or not, so you can cut out these squares any way you like.) Ok, you're done with the diagonal pieces. They were a lot easier than the steps, werent they?

Putting it all together: First off, you now have 9 panels: 4 steps and 5 diagonals. These are arranged in the appropriate layout, and each is screwed direcly to the foundation. They are not attached to each other in any way. First i'll tell you how i did this, then i'll tell you a much much easier method that didnt occur to me til someone mentioned it on the ddrfreak formus. My way: Lay all your steps on the foundation board you cut at the very beginning, and arrange them all just like you want them to be when it's done. Make sure the wires from the steps are resting in their little trenches, and they should be hanging out the outside edge of the pad. (Recall earlier i said you'll get slightly worse sensitivity near the corner where you attached the wire, so make these all stick outward.) Now you need to elevate the pad so you can screw things in from the bottom. You can either lay it on a table with one edge hanging slightly over (not enough to make it fall off the table!) or rest two opposing edges on some kitchen chairs so you can lay under it and get to the bottom. Using your clamps, clamp down one panel at a time, then drill some holes into it from below (note, only have your drill bit stick out far enough to go through the foundation and partly into the top panel, you dnot want them to go all the way through the top panel!!) Once the holes are drilled, switch to your screwdriver bit and screw in some screws. (Again, screws must be short enough to not go all the way through the top panel. If you used all the materials i recommended, 1.25" drywall screws work well. Put at least 5 screws per panel, but the more the better. The shelving im using does not hold screws very well, so you'll want to use more than 5, and DONT try to put screws in without it firmly clamped down or the shelf will just tear off.) I recommend you screw down the 5 diagonal panels first, then do the steps. I dont feel like explaining why, but trust me it'll work better that way. (However, you must keep the steps in position the entire time so you can be sure they will fit tightly.)

Ok, now for the much easier way to do it. For this, you basically do the same thing, but screw everything in from the top. You know the 1/2" screws you used to hold the sheet metal onto the steps? Get rid of those. Instead just use a much longer screw that will go through the sheet metal, through the step, and straight on into the foundation, screwing the whole thing togehter at once. Do the same thing in each corner of the diagonal steps. Note that if you use this method you'll have screws sticking out of each panel, not just the steps, so if that bothers you, use my method above. This method is also nice cause you only need one type of screw, so you can buy one box of screws and be done. A note about screwing and drilling holes: I dont want to go into too much detail here, but a little might be helpful. You should pre-drill holes for all your screws, and the holes should be a litttle bit smaller than the screw would be if you took all the threads off. HOWEVER... this only applies to the second board you're screwing into. The first board should have a hole that is slightly LARGER than the threads, so that the screw goes freely through the first hole, and is really only screwed into the second board. This isnt really critical, and if you use a small hole for both boards you'll probably be ok. But if you want to make sure it comes out really nice, its worth doing it this way. (ps, to do this you first drill the small hole through both boards together, then switch to a larger drill bit and redrill the same hole, stopping when you get through the top board.

Hooking up the other side of the circuit: The steel sheet metal forms the other half of the circuit, so you need to attach the white wire from each pair to its corresponding steel square. So cut about .5" of insulation off the end of the white wire in each pair. (um the end closest to the pad in case that needs to be said.) Now the easiest way to attach this is to loosen one of the four corner screws, and wrap the end of the wire around the screw, then tighten it back down. The problem with that is you now have wires showing on the top of your pad, which you might not like. There are other methods, but really I dont want to go into them... you can be creative. Just find some way to get it on htere. you could solder it. You could wedge it underneat one edge between the metal and plywood. whatever you like.

Wiring: I dont feel like spending a lot of time on this right now either... the wiring is exactly the same as any other homepad. basically each colored wire you have goes to the corresponding solder point for that arrow on the control circuit board. The four white wires all get wrapped together (keep them together with some solder) and soldered to the ground side of your controller pad. To do the actual soldering, first drill a small hole near the solder point that you can feed the wire through from behind. Then use a method like we used for soldering to the penny above... first get a small bit of solder stuck to the control board, then position your wire in place on top of it and heat it til it melts into the solder. Heres a picture of what it should look like:

Again, theres plenty of info about this in other tutorials and on the ddrfreak forums. (Note, the photo shows wires soldered to some of x/o buttons too. Those arent described in this tutorial.)

Oh, so where do the wires actually go? Well they should just be hanging loosely out the sides of your pad. So I just duct taped them flat along the bottom of the pad. Nothing elegant about it, but it works. If you play on a hard floor, this might not work so well, so you have a few options, you could duct tape them to the sides (pretty ugly) you could tape them to the bottom, then cover the whole bottom with something soft so it sits evenly (like a piece of felt or foamy stuff) You could attach some feet to the pad (not just in the corners, but maybe attach 16 in a 4 by 4 grid along the bottom. Use your imagination. I play on a rug so taped to the bottom is fine for me.

Anyway thats about it. I know it probably isnt too clear for now, especially at the end, but i'll clean it up over the next couple weeks. This should be enough to get you going though. Just plug it in and you're ready to go. Two quick troubleshooting notes: two things can go wrong, an arrow is always pressed, or it is never pressed. If it is always pressed, tighten the screws in the corners... this will push the sheet metal down in the corners and cause the center to bulge upwards because of the cardboard strips. If an arrow is never pressed, you have a loose wire somewhere. Hopefully it's on the outside, because getting back inside can be tricky :( If you have any questions about this design, or ways you could modify it, let me know on the ddrfreak forums, or at the email below. I will be updating the page as I have time, but if you have any input on what I should clarify/add pictures to first, let me know.